Brazil — Mio Unripe Cherries

• Producer — Fazenda Mio
• Region — Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil
• Variety — Yellow and Red Catucaí, Mundo Novo, Yellow Bourbon
• Terroir — 1100 masl, temperate tropical climate
• Process — Carbonic maceration

Tastes like

Golden syrup + Apricot + Smooth

View taste card here.

Recommended brewing

• Best: Pour over with the Orea Brewer V3
• Great: Filter (batch brew, Chemex)
• Very good: Espresso

Fazenda Mio and unripe cherries

With Fazenda Mio, the Pellicer family have made a big impression on us over the past few years. Mio has become synonymous with consistently high-quality espresso coffees that never fail to celebrate the archetypal characteristics of Brazil's crop - think rich chocolate and sweet nut flavours, balanced acidity and round body.

Recently, the Mio team has collaborated with leading fermentation research scientist Professor Lucas Louzada on a number of pioneering projects focusing on affecting the sensory characteristics of multiple coffee species, varietals and even unripe coffee cherries.

Usually unripe green cherries get separated from ripe red cherries, and are typically sold at much lower prices due to their extremely bitter, astringent and therefore undesirable flavour profile. By taking unripe cherries collected during harvest and processing them with a controlled fermentation, Mio has created value for a previously unwanted product.

This lot of unripe cherries has been through a water-based fermentation that facilitates the breaking down of molecules known to contribute high levels of astringency. The result is a much smoother, sweeter flavour profile, and subsequently a final product that can be sold at a much higher price.